


Paris

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: The Odalisque Timestamps [14]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Abandonment, Fluff (eventually), M/M, Promises, Unexpected Meetings, Violence, odalisque verse, vignettes of sex and violence verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-28
Updated: 2015-03-07
Packaged: 2018-03-15 16:14:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3453665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“I met someone,” the older man remarks, almost idly. “When I was here before. At a cafe much like this one. We spent several weeks together.”</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“Did you fold him delicately into a pate, after folding him delicately over himself in bed?” Will asks, tone bored, still distracted, but at least listening. Hannibal’s lips quirk.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>“She left, when I told her I would not stay more than several days more.”</i>
</p><p>It's all fun and games until someone gets rescued.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> We got an amazing anon message on WB: "I was wondering - within the established extremes of their dynamic, is there anything that's 'too far'? Not necessarily in terms of violence or punishment as that's already just part of what they are together. I think it would be interesting to see what would actually push one of them to their limit, and how they deal with it."
> 
> We couldn't resist. So here is their limit, or as close as either allow themselves to get to it. Thanks, nonny!

“You know,” Hannibal says, “the last time I visited Paris was just before I went to Greece.”

Will doesn’t respond, arm slung over the back of his chair. His attention is focused and distant all at once, observing the ebb and flow of tourist tides towards Sacré-Cœur, glistening white above the park. It isn’t a rudeness that stays his tongue, but an entirely youthful distraction, and Hannibal sips his coffee, far more interested in watching his boy than any of the teeming humanity around them.

He has finished his own breakfast, a fresh-baked pain au chocolate, but Will’s remains untouched but for the bit of his croissant picked loose and thumbed between his lips. Hannibal observes it for a moment, and then the boy again who grins at thoughts not yet revealed, and of which Hannibal can only imagine.

“I met someone,” the older man remarks, almost idly. “When I was here before. At a cafe much like this one. We spent several weeks together.”

“Did you fold him delicately into a pate, after folding him delicately over himself in bed?” Will asks, tone bored, still distracted, but at least listening. Hannibal’s lips quirk.

“She left, when I told her I would not stay more than several days more.”

A blink, and a slow turn of his head and Will’s eyes narrow, just barely, as he looks at Hannibal. Slowly, almost like watching a photograph develop, a smile appears on his face and he tilts his head.

“You tried to replace me with a girl?”

“No boys I found were sufficiently insufferable,” Hannibal replies, and Will’s smile melts to a genuine, wide grin. He shifts his plate aside and curls his arms over the small table, chin atop, legs drawn long beneath it to slip against Hannibal’s. Tailored pants, today, not warm enough for summer clothing, and Will is fairly sure Hannibal would not have been seen with him had he worn a pair of jeans. It hardly matters, really.

“And was she?” He asks, watches Hannibal’s brow raise in question. “Sufficiently insufferable?”

“As far from it as you are it, entirely,” he replies contentedly, taking another small sip of still-steaming coffee. “She was lovely. For our first date, outside morning flirtations, she took me to a church, and we kissed in the entryway to the catacombs.” He sucks the bitter coffee from his lips and his eyes crinkle in pleasure, pressing his leg back against Will’s beneath the table. “We went dancing.”

“Are you trying to make me jealous?” Will teases.

“Perhaps. Is it working?”

“Not in the least,” grins Will, and Hannibal hums pleasurably.

“Her hair was dark, curled as yours is. It reminded me of you when I gathered it in my fingers.”

Will sits back, hands splayed in front of him across the table and back arching as he spreads his shoulders. Preening prettily, he cants his head to the side. “You’re obsessed with me.”

“Too true, I’m afraid,” agrees Hannibal. “Though not for lack of trying. Are you going to eat, or are you wasteful as well as selfish?”

“I’m preemptively working up an agenda for our evening,” Will tells him, pleased. “What good would it be to be selfless?”

He does, however, sit back and start on his food, slow to eat it, savoring as much as he is teasing Hannibal with his pace. He laughs when the man simply orders another coffee and watches Will take his time. He leaves enough on his plate to be insolent, sending Hannibal a warm smirk before pushing himself to stand and leaning over the table to kiss him, a deep and lingering thing.

“I’m going to take the camera for a walk,” Will says, pulling back and taking up the implement to weigh it in his hand. “You are welcome to join.”

“So that I may find more photos of me on it later, taken when I am not only least expecting them but look far from good?”

“I need them as proof,” Will smiles, delighted, aiming the camera even as Hannibal frowns at him, and taking a shot. “That you can be ugly just like everyone else.”

“You’ve certainly got enough.”

Will just smiles at the terse comment and adjusts a setting on the screen. “Untrue. I have yet to find any. Will you stay here or -”

Hannibal lifts a hand, and beckons Will close again. His smile widens, a distinct pleasure in seeing his boy bend for him, to accept another kiss, this time in parting. “I will finish my coffee, and then perhaps visit the Basilica that looks down on us even now in judgment.” He glances just past Will’s shoulder, to the gleaming ivory dome, high atop the butte, and only reluctantly lowers his hand from Will’s cheek.

“Maybe I’ll meet someone this time,” Will muses, and Hannibal grins now, just a flash of teeth before he trains his expression narrower.

“Little Rimbaud, you would make me your Verlaine,” he sighs. “Would that I did not mind firearms as much as I do.”

“Is that how we’ll spend tonight? Drunken infatuation and violence?”

“Every night,” Hannibal assures him. “Now go, before I decide to begin the evening early by having you over the railing of our hotel balcony.”

“I’ll go before I’m tempted,” Will laughs, and with a gentle brush of fingers against Hannibal’s shoulder, he goes.

They have been in Paris three days, and Will has found himself entirely overcome with wanderlust. To see things, to experience them. To use his French in a place where it can get a workout farther than their conversations at home. He’s found himself enthralled with the city again, despite being here before.

Perhaps because now he sees it with Hannibal, not alone. 

He can get the history whispered in his ear, leaning far over at the top of the Notre Dame, regarding the city, he can get anecdotes and stories told him as they make their way along the river. He finds himself exhausted every night, pressed delighted to Hannibal, sweaty and hot, new bruises forming on his skin as scratches form on Hannibal’s.

But where Will finds himself curious, eager to explore and catalog his experience through a lens, he has found Hannibal more or less reluctant to join him. Once in a while, but most days they spend apart, finding each other at the little markets, or at their room. It doesn’t matter, they both do, eventually, and spend the night exchanging their memories of their days.

Will walks and listens, to the chatter of French around him, to the sharp tones of Chinese from tourists that fill the white courtyard and spill from it, to the lilting accents of English, the warmth of other European languages. It’s soothing, comforting, and Will allows himself to lose himself to it all. Blind to all but what his camera sees, deaf to anything but the white noise of life around him.

“Will?”

He knows the voice but can’t place a face to it. He knows it isn’t Beverley and there are few women Will knows well enough to be on first name terms with. He turns, smile already in place, eyes narrowed in bare recognition before his lips part and his brows draw, and he is, for the first time in many months, genuinely surprised.

“Alana?”

The doctor turns to her companions, men in suits and ties and carrying briefcases, and excuses herself politely. Heels clicking against the pavement, rapid as Will’s heart with every step that brings her near, she is understated now - a simple blue dress and her hair pinned up almost neatly - but no less elegant than before.

And her eyes are wide with disbelief. “Will Graham,” she exclaims softly. “From Baltimore. You were Dr. Lecter’s assistant - the mentorship - ”

It’s too late to deny it, to pretend he didn’t hear, to speak another language and claim he doesn’t understand. Her hand is pressed to his cheek, where Hannibal’s was not an hour earlier, and he holds steady the smile he managed to manifest. “Dr. Bloom,” he responds, trilling a laugh. “It’s been… years.”

“Yes, it has,” she responds, and shakes her head. “I can’t believe it - and here. How long have you been here? Baltimore was in shambles - they looked for you for months. There were murders -”

Will’s lips part to answer and he finds his mind at a standstill. So long since he has had to lie to get himself unseen or seen too much, too long since he has had to think of lies as quickly as he speaks them, simultaneously, almost, and he is, for a moment, entirely speechless. He furrows his brows, finds he does not actually have to falsify his concern as he slides it onto his face like a mask.

“Who looked for me?”

“The police, Will, the FBI got involved.”

Will swallows, presses his lips together, shakes his head. Easy distractions, easy play at being the young, confused boy. He wonders how close to the truth he should wander before it gets dangerously close.

“The FBI -”

“You were the right age for the serial killer you profiled,” Alana explains, tone softening to perhaps soften the blow for someone, anyone else, who isn’t Will Graham, who can take things like this with a smile and ask who would last longest in a fight. “And then you disappeared just after another body was found and we feared the worst.”

Will swallows again, presses a hand to his face and draws it down. “I can’t believe it,” he murmurs, and feels his heart hammer sharply with the thought that Hannibal is nearby, that if he were to come here, this would be shattered, over, all of it. “How… how many boys?”

She draws a breath, trying to recall as her eyes turn towards the deep blue ceiling of sky above. “Three,” she recalls. “They found three - one before you went missing, two after. All similar, they called me in to consult and with so many others gone -” She shakes her head again and squeezes his arm, eyes still wide. “It doesn’t matter now. I can’t believe you’re here - why are you here?”

Will shrugs up one shoulder, swallowing roughly, the thickness in his throat all too real. “Everyone had told me it was too much pressure, that I would burn out,” he manages. “And I guess ‘time off’ became a lot of time off.”

“But you didn’t tell anyone,” she answers, a little sharply. “None of your friends, your teachers - Dr. Lecter.”

The name is like ice water spilling against bare skin, a shocking chill that tightens his muscles in place enough to stop from looking behind himself. If he’s here, as he said he might be, then it’s done - there’s no chance that both, all three, would end up here by coincidence alone. Abduction, kidnapping, layers and layers unravelling wildly -

But her eyes are on him, taking in every distant look, every lost moment, and Will blinks. “You spoke with them?”

“I didn’t, not directly, I’m not an investigator,” she clarifies. “I only wrote to Hannibal, but he didn’t know anything more than anyone else did. He left just before you.”

Will swallows his relief down and presses his hand to his lips again. He wants nothing more than to placate and escape, to tell her gentle possibly honest things and then have her go, and vanish into the crowd. Get back. Tell Hannibal. Get out of Paris on the first available flight back to Greece.

“He said he was going away,” Will agrees, words mumbled now, dazed. “He gave me an address to write to, but all my letters returned, and he didn’t take his phone with him I just - I assumed he had come back and would contact me. But I moved boarding houses and -”

Easy enough to play the little lost boy, panicking and nervous. He can see Alana already concerned that he will be sick, or fall, or faint. It’s easy. That is easy. It’s getting free that will be problematic. Alana seems determined to hold him, physically, close to her now that she’s found him. The boy missing for years, presumed dead.

“I think I need to sit down,” Will says, finds the closest bench to drop himself into and ducks his head as he leans his elbows on his knees, camera hanging on its cord from his neck. He needs to breathe, to think. To find another, better lie and remember never to answer to his name in public.

“I’m so glad I found you, Will, I’ve been worried.”

Will makes a sound, a little thing, and allows the touch that comes from that, the gentle gesture of a hand against his shoulder. He swallows, shakes his head and sits up again. He needs to get to his phone, to get to Hannibal.

She waves away her companions, watching with polite interest, and her appointments forgone, settles instead on the bench beside Will. Her hand slips from his shoulder to his back, gentle touches since he does not resist them or tense. She sets her bag between her feet, and reaches for her cell phone.

“Just breathe, okay?” She tells him. “I’m sorry for springing so much on you. You’re just not exactly who I ever imagined I’d see, coming to Paris to for a conference. God, Will - everyone will be so relieved to see you again.”

Will blinks, swallows thick, and keeps his eyes on the ground, heart beat to heart beat, and wonders when it was he decided that he could not harm a woman. When it was he decided that it was a good idea to go off to Paris with Hannibal instead of just waiting for him in Greece like he always did.

“Do you mind if I tell them on my own?” He asks quietly, looking up. “I just… it would be really unfair to have them not hear it from me. Can I -” He reaches for his phone, a small smile from Alana, a nod, and Will unlocks it to quickly type out a message, little and precise, entirely nonsensical to anyone who reads it but the man it is meant for.

_”My sliced suit was returned to me by a mutual friend.”_

“Quite a disappearing act you pulled,” she chastens, but not without a soft smile, relief now, rather than shock. “It’s not every day that someone with so much going for them just pulls up roots.”

Something is sticking, though, and draws in her brows a little. Something doesn’t fit right. She doesn’t have a hold of it yet, and endeavors to keep her expression tempered towards relief, but in sifting through the pieces, there is something missing.

“Are you very busy right now?” She finally asks, hand still perched on her own phone. “We’ll need to call in to the Bureau. They’ll have questions for you, things they need to know so they can close the case out. You can use the phone in my hotel room, it’s really no problem. And I’m sure they would - everyone would - love for you to come back,” she adds gently. “How have you even managed here?”

He could go. A free flight back to a life long abandoned, set up comfortably again and back in school. Friends that he’s missed and a career, studies, and his own murders assigned - though not by name - to Hannibal. He could go and he could start fresh, get away with all of it. Another history erased, another life reinvented.

“Just… getting by,” Will says, laughs nervously and rubs the back of his neck. He could go. He could. “My dad left me some money in an account that I could finally access… it was a surprise but… it helped a lot.”

Alana nods and Will doubts that that one they will check. His dad won’t care. If he was told Will was missing and potentially dead he would wonder why it took so long to happen. Will finds he genuinely holds no grudge. It doesn’t matter.

“Let’s go, before it gets dark,” Alana prompts, and Will nods with a small smile, moving to stand as she does. Arrangements are made with her colleagues, and they leave her and Will alone to return to the car. Will doesn’t talk much on the ride to the hotel, answers simple questions with simple answers, lies when he has to. Mostly he just holds his phone and hopes, waits. Knows he will be able to call Hannibal and figure something out when they arrive, when he has a point to go from.

Alana, as it turns out, is staying in a little place out of the way of the main tourist attractions, a smart choice for someone travelling on business and pleasure both, and Will follows her up the small flight of stairs to the lobby and further still to her room. It is well appointed and clean, and Will seeks with quick eyes in all the rooms he can find before smiling at Alana when she says his name again.

“Are you hungry? We can order something up, if you like.”

Will just shakes his head, fidgets. The boy once again in his ratty sweater and too much time on his hands. Alana nods again and gestures to the phone and Will takes a breath.

“Can you dial?” He asks. “I just… I need to use the bathroom. You can tell them what happened and then I can say anything you like into the phone.”

“This is not about what I would like, Will,” she says gently. “I won’t make you do anything at all. But it would be good for the FBI to know you’re alive and well. For your friends to know. For your father.”

Will nods, shrugs, nods again. “I won’t be a moment.”

He’s directed to the small bathroom that faces the street they had just driven down, winding and cobbled and little, and Will closes the door with a gentle click, curses silently at the lack of lock. He waits until Alana is on the phone before sending another message to Hannibal, and finding, to his disbelief, that the message bounces right back.

_Message cannot be delivered._

He tries again. Again. Again. In a fit of frustration he dials, leaning out the window to keep his voice masked by the sounds of Paris outside, and finds only the irritating French voice informing him that the number he is calling has been disconnected.

“You motherfucking sonofabitch,” Will sighs, pressing his forehead to the warped glass, turning gently to cool it. He sighs, listens for a moment as Alana keeps talking, soft tones and explanations, and considers his options.

The window is narrow but he can fit, if he tries carefully enough. They are on the second floor and the roofs are all old, slippery things and unstable. His camera is still around his neck, having forgotten it was even there until he tries to lean against the glass and finds resistance. He could leave it, take the card and make sure no evidence of Hannibal or himself is on it. But that, too, is risky. Fingerprints and evidence he does not want to leave behind.

Will taps his forehead against the window several times before stepping back and hoisting himself up onto the sink, careful not to keep his weight on it long before shoving his camera out before himself, hanging it on the window’s handle, and squeezing his body through the tight frame. Wriggling one way, then the other, Will manages to settle on the shingles and have them hold his weight.

Two floors.

Well, he’s been thrown further. So he just takes a breath, settles his camera around his neck again, and jumps.

-

A change of name.

A change of scenery.

A change of belongings, new clothes purchased upon arrival in yet another city.

It’s almost like old times, Hannibal muses, but last time he did this it was by choice and with a known conclusion, his to take or leave as he pleased. Now the call of Greece is a siren’s song, eminently tempting in what it could promise, and just as dangerous in what it might take. If Will has been taken into custody, brought back to the States for questioning, Hannibal would expect that any suspicion on him for the bodies in Baltimore would be redirected towards the man himself, in deed if not by name, the latter far harder to believe. In that situation, Hannibal imagines that he would do the same. And so he should expect no less of his little wolf.

He left the museum as soon as he got the text. Line disconnected, phone wiped clean and dropped effortlessly into a trash bin. His carefully selected hotel room was not seen again, the things in it left for either Will to find should he manage to wrangle himself free, or to be cleared out by the hotel staff who would find his card as unreachable as his phone.

Like a snake shedding skin, one life shucked free for another, replaced by glistening soft newness beneath. But it is tender, this time, more than it has been before, with no time to prepare and let the old one dry naturally. It is almost painful, he considers, and every movement without his boy hurts like a bone bruise, aching deep beneath the muscles that carry him through the streets of Prague.

His third city in two weeks, from Paris to Seville, from Seville to Budapest, Budapest to here. He has not even had the wherewithal to enjoy them, let alone the boys who stand long-limbed and lithe against the sides of buildings in narrow cobble-stone streets. Their beckonings are noticed, but unheeded, when every one whose eyes he meets is not his own.

In the worst event, they have been followed, Alana sent ahead as a friend - as bait - to lure one of them back. That would mean they have been watched, monitored, traced until they reached a city that would help in the FBI’s investigations, and then once separate, the easier of the two to snare taken. At best, it was sheer happenstance, an amusing twist in the thread of fates that brought them into passing.

Hannibal wishes he could feel more than a distant delight in the thought of it, but even accepting the whimsies of the universe does not bring Will back into his bed.

He spends three days in Prague, until the city becomes suffocating, and every shadowed passageway a threat. He smokes too much and does not eat, and stays up until dawn thumbing across the screen of another new phone that he has not yet turned on. He stays until he cannot anymore, until the question of Will’s particular thread in their interwoven fates begins to feel too tenuous, and he would rather know of its severance and be caught than to wander the world wondering.

The earliest flight to Greece leaves at five in the morning, and if all goes well, he will reach Zakynthos by nightfall.

-

The house stands as it always has, overbearingly large against the rocky outcroppings of scrub-covered mountains, looking down upon the beach that is isolated enough to be considered their own.

What once theirs, anyway, and now perhaps no longer.

He recoils inside, seeing the lights on inside, imagines Greek police and American agents littered across his couches, in his kitchen, the basement torn apart and evidence marked and tagged, nothing more to do than await his arrival. There are no cars out in front, none but his own, but it means little.

He could run, again, now, he considers, taking in the illumination that shines spotlight bright from the windows. If they are here, they have found all they need to extradite him, charge and find guilty with no more than a passing glance over the countless crimes committed here and in Maryland. He will spend the rest of his life in prison, if he is unlucky. If luck turns her hand to him one more time, though, they will surely kill him, and he supposes that perhaps, at least, they will allow Will to watch, and Hannibal will breathe in the bare traces of him in passing one last time.

Every step is like that to the gallows, his legs heavy as if caked in mire, and he only just resists the urge to enter the house with hands raised and eyes closed.

Within, it is quiet, not eerily so but enough to suggest a normalcy they have not had for several weeks. Classical music is playing throughout, smells of dinner. There is a moment when Hannibal merely stands and waits, wonders when the ambush will hit him. But he finds nothing. Hears nothing. So he steps further into the quiet house alone.

Will is not in the kitchen, nor the living or entertainment rooms. He is not outside, plumes of smoke caught in the still summer air. Hannibal wonders if he is truly here at all. 

Then there is a sound, barely heard but enough, and Hannibal turns, catches a glimpse of wild hair and bright eyes before the side of his face burns with the imprint of a fist, and another before he can even gather himself.

"You fucker," Will snarls. “You cowardly piece of shit! Is that what I fucking mean to you? A call for help and you fucking bail?"

Hannibal blinks and works his jaw from side to side. He has staggered, but not yet fallen, at least until a smile snares the corners of his eyes and he grins, “Little wolf.”

And then he is fallen, taken to the ground by a fury of skinny-strong limbs and agile muscle, hard enough for the air to pop from his lungs and leave him breathless, gasping silent before another punch sends his head aside. The blood in his mouth tastes sweet as wine, the words a symphony as Will beats him mercilessly.

“You piece of shit,” snarls Will. “You fucking bastard. You fucking _left me_!”

Only when the ground begins to undulate beneath him, room spinning, does Hannibal lift his arms to catch the next punch, and spit blood to the floor. It is well-timed, as little hands sink around his throat and prevent him from swallowing, from breathing in more than a rattling whistle. He lifts his eyes and tries to focus, sees a corona of wild curls lit from behind and sharp teeth bared in fury, and in that moment, Hannibal decides that this is the best way of all to die.

“I missed you,” he rasps, eyes laughing where his voice cannot.

Will holds a moment more, eyes narrowed and brows furrowed and lips twisted in a grimace before he lets go and leans in to kiss the man, deep and desperate, hands seeking beneath his head and around his neck to snare him as his body trembles with more than just adrenaline.

He had come home, to their home, to find it empty. No note. No news. Nothing even once he had scoured the house. Will had grown angry at first, cursed the man to all high hell, called good riddance, smoked so much he made himself sick. Then he had stopped sleeping, a panic so thick it choked him. Had Hannibal gone for good? Had he decided this was no longer worth his time? That Will was no longer worth his effort?

The panic had Will sleepless and drunk, cold and terrified. He didn't know where to look, where to start. Known aliases flicking through his mind like cards on a poker table and fingers shaking when he had tried to look them up.

And then the resolute patience to wait, like a dog at his master's grave. Just in case. Just in case Hannibal came home before Will turned the world inside out to find him.

"Never fucking leave me again," he whimpers, just quiet, soft, against Hannibal before pressing to him, arms around him tight enough to grasp his own elbows with white fingers. "I thought you'd gone."

Hannibal sits up slowly, palms against the cold tile, and crosses his legs for Will to sit against him. He surrounds the boy in his arms, nevermind that he’s reasonably sure Will has broken a tooth this time, and keeps him as tight as he can to ease the chill shivering from his little body.

“Breathe,” he whispers against Will’s hair. And he does as he instructs, turning his nose - swollen and surely ghastly - against the soft curls, breathing in the scent of panic and tobacco, sleeplessness and liquor, and under layers of fear, his boy, sweet as spring.

“I thought they’d taken you,” he murmurs, eyes closed as shudders uncoil in spirals through his body, a dizzying relief at being home again, here, with Will, safe, both safe. “But I know your cleverness, little one. I knew I would see you again.”

Either here or from behind prison walls. In their home or in passing to his own execution. He does not tell Will this, not now. He does not tell him that he had decided his last words would be that he has only, ever, always loved him.

"You turned off your fucking phone," Will whispers harshly. “You abandoned me, Hannibal, you left me floating in a sea, unmoored."

He shudders with every soothing word against him, every gentle touch. It is almost unreal to have Hannibal so close again, uncanny to be held by him, to breathe him in. Will feels his heart slow to match Hannibal’s and nuzzles roughly against his neck.

"Will -"

"I cursed you. Would have denied I even knew you, pleaded insanity, pleaded fucking honesty and torn through the bars to kill you myself if you had come to visit, you selfish, arrogant asshole."

Will pulls back, enough to kiss Hannibal again, gentler, now, aware of the damage and proud of it. The fear fading to exhaustion, a forgiveness, a need just to have him close.

"I love you," Will nearly spits, angry, tired, monumentally relieved. "God, don’t you understand that?"

Hannibal runs a hand back over Will’s hair, tucks it behind his ear, follows the rigid bones of his face with careful fingertips as if to memorize them again. The Cupid’s bow curve of his lips, the long bridge of his nose, down to his throat where Hannibal presses his lips instead. Will’s pulse moves hot beneath his mouth, alive, wonderfully alive and free and Hannibal’s own again.

“What could I do but dispose of it?” He asks, only a mild defense of his own actions, that in his mind need no justification. “Were they to confiscate yours from you, and know us to be in contact? I trusted you to find your way free, and you have,” he murmurs, arms tightening when he feels the boy tense at the words.

“You’re full of shit,” Will mutters, brows drawn. “You saved yourself, you left me -”

“To save yourself in kind.”

“Fuck you,” snarls Will, but Hannibal does not let him go, doesn’t even bother to reprimand him for his unconscionable language. “We’re supposed to be partners, and you left me.”

Hannibal frowns, now, just a little, not at the boy’s accusations but at the trembling tension he can’t ease away in him. Always, this has been the only thing that Will feared - not death, not reprisal, not pain or punishment, but being left, alive and alone. Abandoned.

“I left,” Hannibal finally agrees, only to add as gentle reminder, “and I returned. Do you think I would not find you again? I told myself this time to stay away, to go and not return here, to disappear from you entirely, and little wolf, you howled after my every step, calling for me. I have not slept in days, I have hardly been able to bring myself to eat.” He rocks Will back enough to hold his chin, and force their eyes to meet, a dire desperation in his tone, his own fear come to light. “I cannot stay away from you. No matter how much I need, no matter how I try, Will, you hold me in thrall.”

Will just watches him, proud and angry, and relieved, so painfully relieved, that he is here to tell him this, that Will did not have to conjure this in his mind in some cell, in some foreign hotel room. He knows how much Hannibal fears this connection, this thing that has now dogged them for years together. He knows how much he himself fears the very idea of being alone, now.

Yet he had held himself at bay, alone, afraid, and waited.

And Hannibal had come home.

Both breaking through their own scalding chains to come together here, again, like this. 

Will unwraps his arms to set one palm against Hannibal’s face, easing the heat of the swelling with his fear-cold fingers. He keeps his eyes on Hannibal’s and finds, slowly, that his lips curl up in a smile.

"I climbed out of a bathroom window," he tells Hannibal with amusement warming his words. "Nearly slid off the roof on those shingles, I think I scared a homeless guy shitless landing next to him in a sprawl in the street."

Hannibal tilts his head to the side, and his smile finally erupts into a brief grin, teeth flashing. He gathers Will tightly against him, little mind for the battering his body has taken, close enough that their foreheads touch. To see him close, to draw their noses together, to lose himself in glacier-blue eyes that he thought, until just minutes before, he might never see again.

“You ran,” Hannibal muses.

“Well, leapt.”

“You leapt, and then ran.”

“Of course,” Will responds, and though his chin lifts primly, his brows draw inward. “So I could get back to you.”

“Of course,” echoes Hannibal. It pulls a soft hiss from him, but he turns his bruised cheek against Will’s hand, his nose, nuzzling against his boy’s palm. He closes his eyes - one already closing for him with swelling - and sighs, just to feel how the heat of his breath curls back off Will’s skin. “I knew they would not keep you.”

“You didn’t know that,” Will challenges, his voice tempered. “You didn’t know, and that’s why you didn’t wait. Or come for me. Or come home.”

Hannibal takes the scolding for now, and considers it worth the verbal and physical stripes to feel Will’s spine begin to lengthen, loosen, vertebrae by vertebrae beneath his hands. “It was Alana that found you? How is she?”

Hannibal tries not to let his curiosity tilt towards nostalgia but he knows that he is, however much he tries not to be, an open book to the perceptive boy pressed to him. Perhaps it is the wrong time to ask, perhaps Will is going to strike him again, but Hannibal does not retract the question. She is one of the few people in the world whose company he has missed since leaving that life behind, and though they correspond from time to time, routed through proxy internet connections and mail drops in other countries, he would have been happy to see her again, in Will’s place.

“She seemed fine. Said she was there for a conference,” Will responds, pushing his fingers perhaps a little harder than he should against Hannibal’s cheek. “I’m sure she had the whole city looking for me after, but there’s lots of boys just like me there.”

“None so beautiful,” Hannibal assures him, twisting away from the pain. “None so clever or competent. None so perfect. There are no other boys like you in the world, and trust me when I say that I have sought for them, and found each one wanting.”

The words mean little, with dissonance still echoing so loudly from the weeks Will wandered, wasting, waiting for Hannibal to return, not knowing if he ever would. And so rather than lavish him with praise that he may not believe, in light of such near-betrayal, Hannibal kisses him instead. Despite the blood darkening his tongue, despite the tooth he can feel loose in his gum, despite the pain in his jaw that tells him he will not be able to speak so kindly, if at all, tomorrow, their lips spread and close, ebb and flow, and pulse as their heartbeats do in perfect time together.

Will kisses back, relishes the familiarity, the comfort of it, despite the upset, despite the pain still stroking his heart in reminder. It doesn’t matter, now, when he’s holding Hannibal so close and the man is not leaving. Will ducks his head from the kisses and nuzzles again, rubbing his face up and down against Hannibal’s neck to smell like him again, to feel him everywhere. He is almost tempted to make the man sleep on the couch tonight but the thought of him being even that far away is intolerable.

“I made dinner,” he sighs at length, easing the tightness of his arms around the man and sitting back enough to see him. “Fettuccine with beef and cream sauce,” Will shrugs, smile touching his lips. “We didn’t have beef so I had to substitute. It should be soft enough with your -” A gesture, then, amused, to the damage he had caused the man in his anger.

Hannibal is less amused by far, casting a woeful and wanting look to the kitchen, before tucking his head back against Will again. Head beneath his chin, nose against his throat, to feel warm skin beneath his lips, elastic and taut when Will swallows. Rather than the food he will surely be unable to eat, he savors instead Will’s particular sweetness, and it is enough for now to stave away the deeper hunger that has gnawed at him for weeks.

“You made dinner enough for two,” Hannibal murmurs, “not knowing when I would return. If I would at all.” He wonders how long this had gone on, if at first Will did not, resolutely waiting himself hungry until it became too much, and when it shifted to madness instead, as if by cooking enough for them both, he might summon Hannibal back to him.

Perhaps it was not madness after all, as he did - despite his initial intentions - return, and even now holds Will so close that the boy cannot squirm away.

“Will it keep?” The older man asks, eyes closed where he shifts to rest his unbattered cheek on Will’s shoulder. “I’m afraid you are going to be indisposed for some time. Brave little wolf, who fled your captors,” he sighs, slipping a hand across Will’s belly and up to feel the clench and shudder of his heart.

Will makes a sound, almost fussy, and tries to shift Hannibal’s hand from him, enough to make his upset known.

“I don’t want to sleep with you today,” Will mumbles, but he doesn’t break free of the hold on him, and slowly, inevitably, he presses closer again with a sigh. “It might keep. I will have to put it away, and for that you will have to let me go.”

“No.”

“Wasteful.” Will slips his hand into Hannibal’s hair and remains contented to just hold him there, on the floor of their wide corridor. Then another flash of anger, just one, perhaps the final stick of dynamite in Will’s heart that he had been saving, for himself, for that spark to get him into motion and he sits back, squirms free of Hannibal’s hold and kneels next to him instead.

“I would have scoured the world, looking for you,” Will tells him quietly. “Four more days and you would have found the house empty. And I would have found you. One way or another, Hannibal. You have taught me to hide, and how to run, I would have followed any lead and turned it on its head to find you again.” He swallows, tilts his chin almost loftily, spoiled, beautiful boy. “Do not think for one moment that I would have let you leave me here alone.”

_I would raze cities to the ground to bring heat to myself in your absence but it would not be enough._

Hannibal raises his chin only as Will bends him, fingers fisted hard in his hair, furious enough that he does not seem to realize that he holds Hannibal so. The older man’s eyes darken, his swallow thick in his throat, mottled with shadowy fingers where Will held him to the ground. Will drags a foot underneath himself, another, eyes hooded over with long lashes as he bends to brush his lips across Hannibal’s forehead.

_I would lay waste, desolation without end, in your name so that others in their grief would know a fraction of what I felt._

“I would sooner see us both dead than be without you,” Will whispers against his brow, and as if he were receiving sanctification, Hannibal’s eyes close. He lifts a hand, to press warm to Will’s calf, spanning upward to curl around a skinny jean-clad thigh, and when Will straightens, Hannibal’s eyes open to follow him. Will releases his hair gently, and traces Hannibal’s cheek with the backs of his fingers.

_And no amount of blood would satisfy me for the loss of yours._

“I love you,” Hannibal says, and the words spill from him.

“I know,” Will tells him, draws a hand through his hair and pads off towards the kitchen to plate and fridge their food for another day, to set the dishes to soak and turn off the lights. When he returns, Hannibal is sitting up, knees drawn and hands over them. He looks up when Will’s feet come into his field of vision, and Will kneels in front of him to kiss Hannibal again, a soft thing, almost sleepy, before he takes the older man’s hand and levers himself up again, waiting for Hannibal to follow.

Despite his own protests and anger, Will leads them both to their bedroom and presses close as they both undress, fingers tangling and lips brushing kisses where they can reach. They crawl into bed in silence, sheets surrounding them as they press close as possible, a tangle of limbs and matching heartbeats, rubbing against the other like wolves do in greeting, missing, reminding, adoring.

“Let’s go to Scandinavia next time,” Will mumbles, feels more than hears the hum he gets in reply, amused and tired and relieved all. “Will need to learn Swedish.”

“You imagine I’m taking you somewhere again?” Responds Hannibal, brow lifting as he works his tongue against his loosened tooth. “When I might simply keep you safely here?”

“For now, just do that,” Will agrees. “And next time, because there will be a next time, check for any psychiatric conferences first.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal wonders how he thought, let alone came to accept, that he could stand to be without his boy aside him, beneath him, astride him, near enough to him that he can breathe him in as he does now. It would not be a life, it would be a purgatory, and every body that found its way into his bed and wound up throttled blue would be seeking relief and finding none. No sights would move him. No music would sing to his soul. No food would sate him, no air would let him breathe without this.
> 
> Without Will.
> 
> “Little wolf,” Hannibal murmurs, almost scolding in his fondness, as if annoyed that this boy has made Hannibal love him so entirely.

Will wakes alone, curled in a ball like a cat beneath the sheets that cover him. The bed smells like Hannibal, so he knows, at least, that the night before had not been some conjuring of an obsessed exhausted mind. That and his knuckles ache in blissful reminder. Will groans quietly and turns to bury his face in the side of the bed Hannibal had slept, to breathe him in.

He can hear sounds in the bathroom, water running, breathing, shifting of weight from one bare foot to another. He smiles, he can’t help it. If they do nothing at all for days but rest together and fuck, he will be contented. He has missed Hannibal enough that his bones ached, his heart burned with it.

He stretches, a long pull of muscles to unfurl him onto his back and settles back into bed to doze and wait, eyes barely open and sheets covering from his nose down, thin and light enough to leave little detail out where it rests against him.

It is a far less romantic sentiment from the bathroom, as Hannibal lights up the small space with foul curses spat in Lithuanian - against himself, against Will, against the world, and especially against the tooth that finally clatters into the sink. Not worth saving, not worth trying to find a dentist or going to the mainland for it when he could just as soon pluck it free and let it heal, rather than allow the crack to fester into his gums.

A bicuspid, split nearly in two where Will's knuckles contacted it through Hannibal's cheek, thankfully far enough back - and his own smile practiced enough - that its absence will go unnoticed. He spits a mouthful of blood to pinken in the running water, and examines the hole left, setting aside the pliers used to work it free, sanitized and brought up from the basement. It is not large enough, he thinks, to merit stitches, but there will be little enough eating until it heals, no smoking, no substances too hot or too cold.

And, perhaps most worthy of the long-suffering sigh Hannibal releases, no sucking.

Anything.

He swallows a pill for the pain, contemplates a second one to shift it to pleasure instead, but decides against it for now. Carefully, Hannibal packs cotton, treated with an herbal remedy, against his gum and bites, grimacing at himself in the mirror, swollen face, and miscolored. One eye nearly closed but no bones broken there, at least, and it should lessen throughout the day. Strangulation bruises in the shape of Will's elegant fingers just beneath his jaw.

Hannibal traces them fondly, allowing a soft - if pained - smile, and then pads back towards the bedroom, leaving the mess for now.

Will doesn’t respond to his return, though he does feel it, like a pleasant chill against his skin, just the proximity of him, the fondness and warmth radiating from the man before he lifts the sheet to join Will beneath it.

Will smells the herbs, the blood, hums and presses his lips together at the taste both draw against his palette and feels himself smile, even as his eyes don’t open and he knows Hannibal responds in kind. He does not accommodate for him, does not shift back to his side of the bed, just remains splayed as he is, naked and sleepy, and seeks out with heavy arms to wrap around Hannibal’s neck when the man settles his weight against him.

Will draws his knees up around Hannibal and carefully folds his legs around him, entirely ensnaring the man and sighing contented when his weight rests on Will fully, pressing his ribs against his lungs, his stomach in… heavy and masculine and familiar and perfect.

“Not letting you out of bed again,” he mumbles, turning his head to kiss against Hannibal’s cheek.

“Considering the strength of the codeine I just took,” Hannibal mutters, his words slightly slurred from the gauze crammed into his mouth, “you will be lucky to uproot me two days from now.”

He lays heavy across his boy, covering him like a blanket, contentedly wrapped in the little limbs he knows so well, that have laid claim to him entirely of their owner’s will, despite how Hannibal would argue that he has allowed that claim to take place. Their hearts beat against the other’s chest, they fit in all the curves and hollows where their bodies meet, the only other in the world so like themselves that even their bodies seem carved of the same materials.

The fleeting kisses are soft as moth wings against his skin, each eliciting a purr of contentment from the older man, who tilts in increments so that every inch can be worshipped with such tender adoration. And slowly, so slowly, unhurried now that they are no longer pursued, by any other or their own fears, it is Hannibal’s hips that tilt and turn, rubbing his hardening cock into the hollow where Will’s thigh meets his groin, spine curving and muscles along his ass and thighs clenching to find friction against his boy’s warmth.

Will allows the motion, settling back into bed and spreading himself incrementally wider to accommodate Hannibal’s rutting. It’s entirely normal to him, comfortable, pleasant in a warm and tickling way as Hannibal’s thigh, in turn, rubs against Will as well to stimulate.

He draws his hands through Hannibal’s hair and down his back, draws nails back up to feel the man shiver, growl his response.

“I haven’t cum since Paris,” Will tells him absently, entirely true, for a change, and he can feel the way the words tense Hannibal entirely, despite the drugs coursing through him, tightening the space between synapses and simultaneously just shutting them down. “Didn’t hunt,” Will continues, “didn’t even touch.”

At this last, Hannibal does lift his head enough to meet the boy’s eyes, to see the hunger dawning however sleepily in them. A smile, small due to pain but there, drawing up the muscles beneath his eyes, and Hannibal rests his unstruck cheek back against Will’s shoulder.

“You must have been truly sundered to be so affected as that,” he remarks, a genuine praise despite the tease. He works his hand between their bodies, enough to wrap around Will’s swollen cock, to feel it twitch wanting against his fingers and to slip them over the head and circle his slit, already slick. “I could not even think of hunting,” the man admits, “and in Spain, no less. Prague. Rife with beautiful needy boys, but none of them were you.”

Will’s moan pushes Hannibal’s hips harder, and he reluctantly releases the soft taut skin from beneath his fingers, one final squeeze beneath the swell of the head, warmer to the touch than the rest of him. No hands, yet. There is time for that. No mouths - time enough for that as well. No need to stab rough and wanton into Will’s tight opening.

No, just this. Bodies moving together, settled and heavy and slow, as much to mark themselves with the other’s scent as to seek release.

So they just rock together, slow and deliberate turns of their hips together, warming and pinking skin as Will continues to draw warm lips dry over Hannibal’s skin, continues to caress up and down his back, tugging his hair when he touches it. Breaths growing more labored and eyes still mostly closed as they just feel each other again.

As much as they both enjoy the other’s company, their conversation and discussion, they can communicate intimately, intricately without words at all. A look, a brush of fingers, a ducking of one’s head to hide a look or seek to have attention drawn to it, all of it adds up to this closeness that they cannot nor need to describe. They understand it, that’s what matters.

Will ducks down to nuzzle Hannibal’s neck, hands down against his hips now, lifting his own for Hannibal to hold and smiling, feeling more alive than the last few weeks had him. Like he can breathe again. Will bites his lip, sighs out through his nose and moans.

The sound is like fingers, plucking deep enough inside Hannibal that the vibrations spiral outwards and pull a shudder through his spine. He wonders how he thought, let alone came to accept, that he could stand to be without his boy aside him, beneath him, astride him, near enough to him that he can breathe him in as he does now. It would not be a life, it would be a purgatory, and every body that found its way into his bed and wound up throttled blue would be seeking relief and finding none. No sights would move him. No music would sing to his soul. No food would sate him, no air would let him breathe without this.

Without Will.

“Little wolf,” Hannibal murmurs, almost scolding in his fondness, as if annoyed that this boy has made Hannibal love him so entirely.

Will’s heels press into the backs of his thighs, fingers cling to his hair, Will’s mouth parts to sigh across his ear and Hannibal loses himself, pouring hot against his boy’s soft belly in languid pulses. He does not slow his movements, though, milking himself past completion as stickiness spreads between them, but he lifts his eyes to watch Will, whose beauty is just as blinding in pleasure as in pain, each taken with just as much want as the other.

Close and warm and panting his pleasure as his limbs tremble and press closer to Hannibal even as the man keeps rutting, moving, spreading himself against his boy. Will is going to be filthy, he suspects, and finds himself far from caring. He bends, one way, another, and finds that point where pleasure slices beneath his skin, voice pitching higher as he cums, shuddering, between them as well.

The little spasms still and Will hums, pleased, almost a laugh, lips sticky when he parts them to kiss Hannibal properly, savoring the lingering blood, the sharpness of whatever he’s put on his gums.

“You’re gonna let us sleep filthy?” He teases, nuzzling against him, holding Hannibal’s face in his hands and stroking carefully beneath his eye.

“We would become stuck together,” Hannibal muses, letting the swollen eye close as Will touches softly along the eggplant-purple skin. “It seems somehow fitting.” If he is honest with himself, he looks a mess already, but there is nothing less than utter warmth in Will’s gaze, cheeks florid with their gentle exertions.

The dilemma is obvious. Both are entirely content, though their skin is cooling wet and sticky, snared in each other’s arms and the sheets around their slick bodies. Both are covered now with the other, the musky scent of their mingled semen pleasantly thick in the air. They might bathe, but it would require moving now to prevent later discomfort. They might linger as they are, but find themselves unable to remain so long in bed as they ultimately wish to once their skin dries taut across their bellies and in their coarse curls of hair.

“You have forbade me from leaving bed,” Hannibal reminds him, propping himself onto an elbow, and sweeping his palm across Will’s brow to push his hair out of his eyes. “What’s to be done about this?”

Will hums, still sleepy, but smiling, and nuzzles into Hannibal’s hand before reluctantly pulling away to stand, stumbling a little before he stretches, arms up high above his head and shoulders tight together before he releases the tension with a sigh. He pads to the bathroom without a word, silent for a long moment as he regards the mess before taking up a small towel and wetting a corner with warm water. He washes himself first, eyes on the pliers, the blood.

He takes another towel for Hannibal, and returns on silent cat feet to find the man dozing, relaxed in pleasure and from drugs both, stirring only barely when Will lifts the sheet from him to start to wipe him clean. He presses kisses to Hannibal’s chest, nuzzling the warm hair there, up higher to his neck, kissing beneath his jaw and deliberately sucking a mark until Hannibal makes a soft sound.

“If I’ve forbidden you, you better listen,” Will tells him, amused, knowing that most of their day will be spent sleeping, catching up on the rest both lost while the other was gone. Hannibal down mostly due to the painkillers, Will down because Hannibal is there. There is a pull in him to eat, but not enough to get him to leave the room. Instead he steps back and opens their large doors to the balcony, allows the warm air in before climbing into bed and nuzzling Hannibal’s shoulder.

“There’ll be consequences if you disobey. You know the drill.”

"I'm simply terrified," Hannibal murmurs, turning his head aside just enough to watch Will's lips curve against the muscles of his arm. He reaches, gathering little fingers between his own, to lace together and squeeze. Though he says it often, a lifetime saying it would be insufficient to convey how truly beautiful Will is - a muse, in truth, that would have possessed Romantic poets and Renaissance painters, Greek sculptors and Mayan architects. Temples would have been erected to him, wars fought simply to look upon him.

He is a wonder.

And out of the world's possibilities that lay before him, he is here. He waited, here, for Hannibal to return. And the man has no reason not to believe his boy's claims that he would have gouged furrows in the earth to uproot him had he truly tried to disappear.

There are certainly worse fates than to be held under the insolent, imperious command of such a marvelous creature as Will Graham. Hannibal's smile only shows in his eyes, though, as he warns in a warm slur of swollen words, "If I cannot leave, then it means you must tend to me. Entirely."

Will sighs, a deep thing, put-upon, and yet entirely warm, entirely loving. Will slips one leg between Hannibal’s and draws his teeth just lightly over his arm before lips softly follow them.

“A worthy burden, I suppose,” Will murmurs, eyes up where he can catch Hannibal’s sleepy, hooded gaze. They narrow, just barely, just enough, and he bites his lip lightly before pushing up enough to kiss against Hannibal’s cheek, against where the cotton bud rests and Hannibal winces. So Will kisses him again.

“You told me once you would pull teeth were I to swear,” he reminds him gently, words from a lifetime ago when neither thought they would see the other again, one of them dead, the other silent on the matter.

Hannibal hums, remembers, closes his eyes in warm pleasure. “I did not swear.”

“No, you broke an oath instead,” Will tells him gently, and the anger is no longer there from the night before, no longer seething and seeping through every pore of his skin. They are together, that’s what matters, and wasted energy is worthless to them both. “You swore you would destroy me before seeing me leave, and you left first.”

He hums, smile slipping wide over lazy lips and Will presses it against Hannibal’s mouth. “A worthy burden, I suppose.”

Hannibal can count the number of times in his life in which he’s felt guilt on one hand. It is a rare sensation, and he holds it now in his chest and wonders at its weight, how it sits against his ribs, between them, like molten lead. He forces himself to draw a breath, thumb stroking against the side of Will’s finger, and turns his head to rest his lips against his boy’s hair.

“Is the oath broken if I returned?” He asks, and for now, he is sedate enough that there is not a logical loop to the question - it is simply what it is.

“Returning doesn’t change the fact that you left,” Will responds. “Doesn’t change the fact that you left _me_. Alone. No explanation, no plan, not even a goodbye. You fucking vanished.”

The curse forces another breath through seemingly splintering ribs, but Hannibal sighs it long, to remind himself that despite the weight of Will’s words, he can breathe, still, and speak. “A plan, then,” Hannibal agrees. “For if it happens again, if we are separated. Where we will meet, when.” He swallows roughly, grimacing at the sensation and grateful for the pain of it, a visceral reminder of Will’s hurt. “I will not leave you again.” He presses his tongue, dry, past his lips. “I will not leave you.”

Will’s fingers squeeze tight against Hannibal’s and he says nothing more on the matter, just turns enough to rub his cheek with Hannibals and sigh softly, a forgiveness in itself. He believes him. A plan can be made later. Together. When both are coherent and awake, thinking clearer than what they are now. Fed and watered and rested and sated.

Will lets go of Hannibal’s hand to draw his fingers over his skin instead, watching with dark eyes as he skims the smooth surface and draws goosebumps, when he splays his hand hot against it after and elicits a shiver. He could touch him forever, wants to. He knows him by heart. Knows him blindfolded.

“You’re gonna be good and stay in bed all day?” Will asks him, smiles at the hum of assent. “You going to sleep off the pain you earned, then eat what I make you?” Another hum, entirely different in tone but still agreeing, and Will bites his lip. “You gonna wake up after all this and fuck me breathless into the mattress if I bend for you pretty?”

Hannibal’s sigh becomes a moan at the words, at the image that in so little said Will paints for him so vividly. His limbs are so heavy now, the kind of looseness of body and mind that he can only allow around this boy, this beautiful insatiable boy, and he turns a hooded gaze to him, as Will leans over him to fold an arm across his chest, and set his chin upon it.

“Even if you do not,” Hannibal whispers, “I will ensure that you do.”

“Will you,” hums the boy, fingers tracing through the swath of soft hair over Hannibal’s chest.

He nods, lips thinned to a dire seriousness of expression despite the absurdity of his injuries. “Do not think that in my making amends to you, I’ve lost count of your swearing. Nor that in my absence, all the times in which you admittedly cursed me will be unpunished.” Tucking his fingers beneath Will’s jaw, he skims his thumb across his boy’s cheek. “I will paint your body in bruises, outside and in, dreadful boy.”

A pause, and Hannibal’s eyes draw up in a smile as he adds, “And you will relish every moment of it.”

“I will,” Will moans softly for him, a smile tilting his lips as he lets his face fall gently into Hannibal’s palm where he holds him. “Every second.”

They doze, Hannibal first and Will following his lead, pressed against his chest and softly breathing against him through parted lips. It is early afternoon by the time they wake, and Will lets Hannibal up for the bathroom, follows him after before reluctantly leaving him alone to go to the kitchen and prepare something for them to eat.

He considers their options, considers how Hannibal will not be able to take extremes of temperatures or hard foods, settles on warm tea, setting some potatoes to boil for mash later. Once upstairs he straddles the man and hands him his mug, just watching Hannibal sip the drink and hiss at the pain it causes.

They drink in silence, Hannibal settling his hands on Will’s thighs where he sits before Will takes their mugs and returns downstairs with promise of food when he returns. The meal is simple, seasoned beautifully but merely potato, cream and butter. Will cuts up the meat from the night before into small pieces and mixes it in, delighting in how much Hannibal will hate such a simple meal before he takes it up, two bowls seasoned with fresh herbs from the kitchen.

“You will eat it,” Will tells him before straddling him again, passing the thing over with a smirk. “And you will enjoy it.’

Hannibal pushes his hand against Will’s thigh as he accepts the bowl with the other, and works his thumb against the femoral pushing back against his touch. A little higher, then, daring, seeking out the hot crevice where he rubbed himself before.

Will’s swat with a spoon stops him. “Eat,” he says again, and Hannibal sighs.

“It will be painful,” he murmurs, and Will grins so wide he nearly breaks into a laugh.

“Are you _pouting_ right now?”

“Of course not,” mutters Hannibal, resisting the urge to tongue the slot between his teeth, gauze drying dark beside the bed. “Merely that I cannot enjoy it if -”

“You will though,” Will corrects him, spooning up his own mash contentedly. “Because I told you that you will.”

Hannibal watches him from under his hair, this lovely little thing that sits perched on his hips, capricious as a faun. Grudgingly, he lifts the spoon, and sets the meat-studded mashed potatoes against his tongue to slowly swallow. It is seasoned very well, although so much movement in his mouth is every bit the discomfort he predicted, it is the best that he can do. His stomach coils and growls, lashing out in reminder for his neglect of it in the last few days, and he takes another careful spoonful.

“Who was this? Your substitute for beef.”

"Our last, I suspect. From the freezer."

"Arm or leg?"

"Please," Will snorts, tilts his head and takes another heaped spoonful between his lips with a coy look. "The leg is much more tender, and he was entirely relaxed when you killed him. This is why I tell you to let them cum first, all tension gone, no bitterness in the meat at all."

He watches Hannibal's eyes narrow in pleasure, pride, and smiles around his spoon. Will does not make Hannibal finish it all, seeing how much pain he is in, and takes his empty bowl and Hannibal's to the kitchen again. A stop there to do dishes and set things away before Will returns, crawls over the bed like a cat and kisses against Hannibal’s neck. 

Hannibal has torn off another piece of cotton to bite down on, swallowed another pain pill, and with food in his stomach and a beautiful boy atop him, he imagines he could be in much worse shape than this. Hands push up against Will’s bare thighs, fingernails dragging across the fine hairs inside, until he finds Will’s narrow hips and presses his palms against them. He settles the boy to sit against him, holding him in place so that he can rub slow between his legs.

“I had thought it an act of sympathy,” he responds.

“The food?”

“In a sense,” Hannibal smiles. “Letting them release first. Sympathy for their last act being one of euphoria.”

Will snorts, scoffing, and Hannibal loves him.

“I also considered that you asked it of me so that you knew I would intercede, before they could do so inside of your body,” the older man continues. At this, Will laughs, and Hannibal loves him all the more. “Perhaps I have grown crueler,” considers Hannibal, a tone akin to one discussing whether they should plant roses this year, or peonies.

"Certainly more creative," Will says, biting his lip a little as he rocks against Hannibal some more. “You fuel on anger, now, a lot of what you do, you do to rile yourself to savagery." Will hums, pleased, and grins. "And then you unleash. I love watching you."

Will breaks from the gentle grip to splay himself over Hannibal, knees to the bed and hips up as his back curves and Will tongues against Hannibal’s nipple, taking it between his teeth to gently tug.

He is as youthful now, as when Hannibal had found him on the street corner, little has changed beyond his strength and skills growing. Will is almost frighteningly perpetually young, unchanged, a little Dorian Grey. He continues his teasing, turning his feet inwards to curl toes beneath Hannibal’s ankles, hands to the bed, for now, as his mouth works and his skin pinkens from the sensation of closeness alone.

Hannibal sighs, watching Will’s dark tongue press across his hardened nipple, gather and dampen the thick hair that pulls straight when he lifts his tongue away. Twenty years old now, fully four years older than the age Hannibal generally prefers, but not a day older in appearance than fifteen, as in the video he shared with Hannibal, and that the older man has watched more times than he would care to admit.

“I enjoy the climax of it,” Hannibal murmurs. “Tightening my own strings until they snap into release, the sensation - however calculated - of losing and reclaiming you. You are my fascination now.”

He swallows, eyes closing as his throat works and his back bends, when Will pushes little hands across his stomach and kisses lower, bowed across the older man’s body.

“The most promising boy of them all,” he says softly, resting a heavy hand on Will’s head. “The only one who has reached his potential.”

Will shivers, nuzzling against Hannibal’s stomach, breathing soft against it before he licks his lip into his mouth and bends further still, to sigh over the man’s length, eyes hooded, dark, before licking him with just the tip of his tongue and bending to press his lips to the head of his cock.

He hears the words between the words. The only boy allowed to live. The only boy interesting enough, fascinating enough, powerful enough. Worthy enough. Will makes a little noise and parts his lips to take Hannibal further into his mouth. Almost as though this is new, almost delicate in his handling, as Will worships Hannibal with his mouth as the other had with his words.

Eyes closed and hips up, Will takes his time, beautiful to look at and to feel, taking Hannibal further into his throat until he chokes quietly, does it again, holding the man against the back of his throat and swallowing thickly over and over. He relishes the way Hannibal's fingers curl tight in his hair, the way the curls are pulled taut before his scalp is soothed by gentle fingertips.

He adores him. In every and any way.

Without pulling far back, Will lifts his eyes to meet Hannibal’s, eyes narrowing in a smile, and slinks his hand down between his legs so Hannibal can watch him work himself to trembling, just for him.

The boy is already beautifully hard, the taste and scent of the older man enough to be intoxicating and drive him equally to wanting. He works his wrist in circles, stroking from base to tip in hard, slow pulls, and Hannibal is hypnotized by the pleasure Will gives himself, that he takes from giving to Hannibal with reddened lips made shining with spit. Every time is like the first time - though he has had Will’s mouth more times than he can recall, the sensations are so strong that it feels as if he never has been given that privilege before.

Little fingers slip back the silky skin from the head of Hannibal’s cock, and it’s enough to send the older man - even in his laxity - arching with a groan. Bared, slick and swollen scarlet, he seeks out Will’s throat again, across the undulating tongue, past teeth that scrape just enough to tighten Hannibal’s fingers and coil hot in his belly. He contacts, the dripping tip of his cock meeting resistance, before Will bows his shoulders deeper and sighs through his nose, and Hannibal feels the boy’s throat open for him. Deeper then, holding, Will’s nose tickled by the dark hair at the base of Hannibal’s cock, and it takes no more than feeling those soft membranes clench and pull in a swallow for Hannibal to let himself go.

Sticky gobs, sliding down an opened throat, Will swallows and the sensation of it milks Hannibal moaning down to drops, watching his boy’s throat jolt with each pulse of semen he takes into his belly. He wants, suddenly, to feel the same smoldering spread against his tongue, to feel Will buck and tremble and quiver in his mouth, and bemoans silently that he cannot. Instead, he will watch, and grasping Will by the chin pulls him free of his softening member.

A milky string of spit connects them and Hannibal wishes he could cum again at the sight of Will drawing a finger across his lips to snap the thread free, and lick it from his fingertips. Debauched boy, devilish and divine, with his mahogany curls and summer sky eyes, the bloom of his lips unfurling like a rose blossom as he grins. Hannibal does not release him, but drags him up higher, to sit across his belly, and watch Will roll his hips and fuck his own tight little fist.

“Selfish,” Will murmurs, and his voice is lower, rough, and he grins, watching Hannibal respond. Will continues to touch, deliberate strokes and twists of his wrist, knowing Hannibal watches his face as surely as he watches his hand, smiles when Hannibal brings his own down to set against Will’s wrist, to feel the way the muscles move, the way his pulse quickens as he hardens, leaks against his fingers.

“And if I stop, hmm?” Will asks, amused.

“Then you will find yourself aching as you have been, for release, and no mercy from me," Hannibal tells him, eyes wrinkling at the corners in his pleasure, at Will’s expression, at the way he bends and arches and twists for him.

Will moans, a sweet, soft noise, and bends to gently kiss Hannibal on the lips, barely a lingering thing before he sighs, nuzzles against him.

“Watch, then,” he allows, youthful and proud, and sits up again, one hand down against Hannibal’s chest, the other working himself harder, squeezing around the head, sighing his pleasure.

Hannibal does, gladly. The shifting muscles beneath skin, like shadows under smooth water, the crest and dip of bones as Will curves his shoulders forward and thrusts against his own hand. He is imperious, stubborn in his loveliness, entirely too aware of the hunger that Hannibal feels ravenous inside himself when Will’s lips part and a sweet, soft sound issues forth, no words needed to carry his pleasure when the lilt of his whimpers does so, and so perfectly.

“You are the only one that I would consume raw,” Hannibal murmurs, mouth falling slack in sympathy when the words rip a moan from deeper inside his boy, that dark spring that issues forth wanton desires that no one but they might ever understand. “I would bite clean through your skin, feel it snap elastic between my teeth, your blood and your seed spilling between my teeth. Your whole length swallowed into my stomach.”

Will pushes against Hannibal’s chest, shoving himself into a backwards bend, head thrown back and lolling loose as he gasps towards the ceiling. The older man chokes down air past the tangle of his throat, and whispers, “It would be a crime to cook you. To taint you with oils and herbs, when your flesh alone would be so sweet.”

Will shudders, close now, still holding himself at bay as Hannibal’s words wash over his skin. A worship, an apology, a promise - and Will takes it all, lets it fill his lungs until they burn, his heart until it beats almost clear through him. He sits up, a little higher, lips parted and slick, and eyes hooded, and ducks his head.

A stroke, another, needy drawled noises as he brings himself to the edge and over, white fluid hot and thick over Hannibal’s chest as Will shudders and whimpers against him, just out of reach to be kissed, tongue just visible between his teeth as he pants quietly in the hot air between them. With a sigh, a curl of his lip into a smile, Will sits up and sets his hand against the mess, splaying his hand in it and rubbing it against Hannibal’s skin, the hair there.

“Mine,” he declares quietly, bringing his hand up to suck just one finger clean before giving Hannibal a narrow-eyed look of amusement and making to get off him.

Even with leaden limbs from the painkillers coursing cloying through his veins, Hannibal is fast. He catches Will by the hair, tight enough to make his roots scream and a shuddering gasp force itself from him again. Hannibal holds the boy bent, curls stretched straight between his fingers, and then pulls him downward to drag the boy’s face against his chest, through his own sticky mess, eyes nearly closing in contentment when Will mouths against the wet hair.

“Yours,” Hannibal whispers, and he does not ease his grasp until Will’s tongue drags to lap his chest hair clean again.

Will endures the treatment, bent and spent and tired, and only struggles free when he’s lapped the man clean, one mate cleaning another. He glares only briefly before his nose wrinkles with a smile and he licks his lips.

“I need to wash my face,” he says, accepts the warm palm against his clean cheek before he’s allowed up.

It is late evening when they wake again, and Will makes a trip to the kitchen for more tea for them both, stops in the bathroom for more painkillers for Hannibal to take. It is lazy and warm, and neither speak much beyond the occasional soft request as to the other’s comfort, their state of being or mind.

Will sits with his knees bent up against his chest, book balanced on them as he balances the hot mug between his hands and reads. He smiles when he feels Hannibal reach out to stroke his knuckles up and down his thigh and adjusts the book to one knee as he straightens his leg again for Hannibal to touch as he pleases.

Fingertips trace the contours of Will’s muscles, strong and lean, first along the dark hairs on the outside of his thigh, and then curving across his knee to stroke up the interior. Softer fluff here, his skin golden from the sun that the boy seems to worship, laying out half-asleep in the garden, or swimming bare in the sea. Hannibal does not yet let himself reach between the boy’s legs - though tempting, he’s reasonably certain he could not entertain himself upon Will for a third time in one day.

Reasonably certain.

His smile curves a little, until pain forces it to linger only in his eyes, and he marks the ridge of Will’s hip with grazing fingernails that skim along his belly next. Hannibal makes a small sound, pleased, when it convulses ticklish beneath his touch, before his fingers wander under the spine of his book to learn the pathways of his other leg just as intimately.

“What are you reading?” The older man murmurs, spread long on his side, facing the boy, his vision too far gone for him to read, himself, and so instead reading Will’s body - his favorite poetry.

Will hums, shifting so he’s sitting closer, without taking his eyes off the book, without setting his tea away. He licks his lips and holds his page, reading quietly from the passage he’s on.

“I’ll be your slaughterhouse, your killing floor, your morgue and final resting, walking around with this bullet inside me ‘cause I couldn’t make you love me and I’m tired of pulling your teeth. Don’t you see, it’s like I’ve swallowed your house keys, and it feels so natural, like the bullet was already there, like it’s been waiting inside me the whole time.”

Will takes a sip of tea, slides a little further down the bed, continues to read softly, as Hannibal’s hand splays and strokes over him. “Do you want it? Do you want anything I have? Will you throw me to the ground like you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands? If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand. Do you know how it ends? Do you feel lucky? Do you want to go home now? There’s a bottle of whiskey in the trunk of the Chevy and a dead man at our feet staring up at us like we’re something interesting.”

Hannibal lifts his eyes, watches the words blossom from Will’s lips, as breathtaking to watch them spoken as to hear them, to feel their resonance in his boy’s own labyrinthine mind. He draws closer, until his head rests against Will’s well-stroked thigh, and closes his eyes again beneath the gentle fingers that find their way to his hair.

“I suppose hoping for Whitman was a step too far,” he teases, and draws in a long breath through his nose when Will’s fingers tighten as if in tender punishment. “Although he had his morbid moments, as well, I suppose - ‘I will show that nothing can happen more beautiful than death.’”

He cannot, in all his depths of knowledge, imagine where Will has come from. It is as though he sprung into the world fully-formed as Athena, spilling forth full of knowledge and beauty and violence, not a creature made by anything so tedious as an unfortunate upbringing or poor parenting, but one that simply exists. Has, perhaps, always existed, through countless cultures and epochs, in some form or another.

Hannibal wonders if they have known each other before, seeking out their sibling in sex and sadism, always unfulfilled until they found each other or death took them. He mouths softly against Will’s leg where he rests, and whispers, morphine-thick and dreamy, “I need no other but you. And if you wished it, I would gladly make it so.”

Will glances down from his book, mug resting against it to keep it open as he strokes softly through Hannibal’s hair, unsettling the strands and soothing them again. He is exhausted and in pain, held down by drugs and his own guilt, now, and Will adores him. In this form, when he’s straight-backed and beautiful in the kitchen, when he stands above Will, fists bloody and teeth bared - he adores him.

Will curls his hand down beneath Hannibal’s chin and strokes his thumb over his cheek, over and over until the man curls like a cat against him and Will smiles enough to just barely show his teeth.

“You already own me,” Will tells him gently, “as I am, as I will be, in death, should it come to that.”

“It will,” Hannibal responds, and there is comfort in his words. “One way or another, it will.” He turns his cheek against Will’s hand, nuzzles against his leg again, numb to the pain in his jaw, in his eye, in his heart at the thought not of dying - he has never feared that - but that at some point in time, there will be no more moments like this, soft and serene, no more chances to shove Will against a wall or drag him across the floor, no more opportunities to hear him whisper Hannibal’s name like a prayer past broken lips and press them smoldering to Hannibal’s own. That absence, that is what Hannibal will mourn, and so he hopes as he always has that he - _selfish_ \- will be the first to go.

“You would not have me forsake others for you?” Hannibal asks again, the muscles beneath his eyes gathering in quiet amusement. “You would not hold me entirely in your sway?”

“I do, already,” Will assures him, grinning crooked as he twists a lock of Hannibal’s lank hair around his finger. The older man hums, and lifts his hand to follow Will’s fingers against the book with his own.

“It is a relief and terror both that you know it.”

Will smiles, sets his mug and book aside before letting Hannibal play with his fingers, spread them, splay them, curl them with his own and trace, over and over, like lines painted on skin, over knuckle and bone to fingertip.

“Do you not hold me entirely in yours?” Will asks him gently. “The only one I want to come home to, seek out, reinvent the world for?”

He’s drowsy, not as Hannibal is but for his own sleeplessness and his own exhaustion. He doesn’t know what time it is. He doesn’t know what time Hannibal had flown from, what his body is used to with rest and recovery. Outside it is dark, and he gauges time purely on that fact alone. Late. Late enough.

Will shifts to slide down the bed again, lifting Hannibal’s head to set it to his stomach instead, drawing the blanket up a little more over them both.

“We will conquer the world, you and I,” he promises softly.

This pulls a smile from Hannibal, turned against Will’s soft stomach. He can feel his heart begin to slow, his breaths deepen - a peacefulness that only Will can grant him, the only one with whom Hannibal feels safe enough to allow his defenses so low. He slips a leg over Will’s, arm wrapping over his waist to pull himself against the little body he knows by heart. With a sigh, he settles, and murmurs softly.

“It will be an easy thing,” he decides, “after we have already conquered each other.”


End file.
